CONNECTING CULTURES

From northern lights to town lights

Sydney Howe used to be able to see the northern lights from her yard. Now, those lights she was so used to seeing in the sky are far away.

“The northern lights were one of my favorite things,” Howe said. “We’d go driving and we’d just follow them to where they’d get brighter.”

As someone who lives over 4,000 miles from where she attends college, Howe, a junior criminal justice major, is often asked how she found out about Waynesburg University. Alaska is home for Howe, but she said she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to stay there for college.

In her junior year of high school in Palmer, Alaska, Howe said she began looking around at colleges far and wide. During the summer, her mother found out about the CSI summer camp Waynesburg University offers to high school students. Since Howe was looking into the criminal justice major at the time, she decided to attend the camp.

“I was like, ‘well might as well try it, and if I can’t handle being that far away from my home, I might have to rethink what I’m going to do.’”

One of the first things Howe noticed was the change in the weather. Howe said she noticed at camp that while she was wearing capris, everyone else was wearing shorts due to the hot summer weather. After deciding to attend Waynesburg for college, Howe said she officially decided she needed to buy new clothes. Due to the short supply of summer clothes in the stores near her in Alaska, she bought her items online.

Aside from the difference in temperature, Howe noticed other weather differences. In Alaska, the weather in an average day usually includes heavy winds and dry air, she said, whereas it rains a lot more often in Pennsylvania and the air is humid.

“We don’t get a lot of rain [in Alaska] and when it does rain, it rains for like 10 to 15 minutes and it’s like these little bitty misty rain drops, but here… I was drenched within a couple minutes walk.”

Howe said the biggest change she had to adapt to was constantly being around people. Since she never lived in a place with so many people in such close proximity, she said living in the dorms was an adjustment.

“The towns are really spread out, so you don’t see that thick volume of people,” Howe said. “You can go through an entire Walmart and be alone.”

Howe said she also noticed a difference in the way people interact with each other. She said people don’t talk as much about religion. People often don’t know whether someone goes to church or not unless they see them there.

“Here, everybody is really open about things, and they’re really willing to talk,” Howe said. “Back home, everyone’s really individualistic.”

In the Alaskan winter, Howe said the roads become so icy that police are lax about pulling people over for red lights, because, although drivers try to stop, they can’t.

“Cops will sit there and watch you pump your breaks and just slide through the intersection, but everyone else is at a dead stop because they can’t start yet because their wheels aren’t turning, so lights take a lot longer, and less people make it through lights.”

Howe continues to get used to seeing deer rather than moose and experiencing the weather changes that come with western Pennsylvania as she works toward graduation.